Approximately 300,000 adults die annually due to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the United States. Survival rates of adult cardiac arrest range from 11-45%. Approximately 16,000 children in the United States experience cardiac arrest annually. In the pediatric intensive-care setting there is one cardiac arrest per 100 admissions and the survival-to-discharge rate for children following in-hospital cardiac arrest is a meager 27%. In the case of a cardiac arrest, providers are expected to treat the patient with immediate chest compressions and defibrillate the patient within 180 seconds, which are the two priorities in basic life support (BLS). Defibrillation is the application of the therapeutic dose of electrical energy through a cardiac arrest patient's heart to depolarize the muscle and return heart to normal sinus rhythm. Anterior-lateral (AL) defibrillator pad placement, as illustrated in FIG. 1A, is the standard pad placement; however, anterior-posterior (AP) pad placement, as illustrated in FIG. 1B, is becoming common practice in pediatric BLS due to defibrillator manufacturer recommendations, which ultimately drive hospital protocol. It has been observed at medical institutions that pediatric nurses often place pads on patients in the AP position. Thus, there is a strong need to train and practice AP pad placement.
Simulation-based training can be an effective method of improving quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and BLS. Healthcare providers for both pediatric and adult patients with hands-on experience with a defibrillator are 87% more likely to successfully defibrillate in a given period of time. Evidence increasingly suggests that training using high-technology simulators results in significant performance advantages for learners in comparison with low-technology simulators. American Heart Association (AHA) requirements for BLS training courses involve online lessons to be completed individually, and then interactive classes with an instructor for skills practice and testing, both of which involve the use of simulation-based training. The current methods of teaching BLS are inadequate because the majority of simulators used for standard BLS training to out-of-hospital providers offer no defibrillation capability, which limits the amount of the hands-on learning that can take place in adult and pediatric BLS courses. Although there are some courses that do include high-technology simulators in training, there are currently few simulators that allow for defibrillation with AP pad placement. This gap in hands-on training could lead to ineffective training of pediatric BLS and confusion in the field.
It is therefore desirable to provide a device for training of current methods of BLS that is affordable and compatible with current simulators and clinical defibrillators.